EU’s underwhelming GPS rival could be axed in new budget cuts

Only 4 of 30 planned satellites are in orbit.

The European Union is holding budget talks to decide how to spend €1 trillion ($1.35 trillion) over the next seven years.

While that sentence may not sound exciting, it could mean the beginning of the end of Galileo, Europe's potential competitor to the Global Positioning System (GPS), and the second such rival, behind Russia's GLONASS.

Galileo, which is officially known as the European Global Navigation Satellite System, only has four of 30 planned satellites in orbit. While Galileo would serve little strategic interest—as it would largely duplicate GPS—its supporters say that it’s important for Europe to have its own such system, largely for political pride reasons.

The project has been over-promised, overdue, and over budget in recent years—Wiredreported back in 2007 that it was due to be fully operational in 2012. As recently as 2011, a German satellite executive was found (via WikiLeaks) to have told the American Embassy in Berlin that the entire project was “a stupid idea.” (That CEO was subsequently fired.)

As The New York Timesreported Thursday, “Washington also asked why, when many European nations were increasingly unable to fulfill their military obligations as members of NATO because of defense cuts, they wanted to splash billions on a project that replicated an existing system paid for by the United States.”

Good, it was a silly waste of money, but then the EU is good at that. I had no idea why we needed our own positioning system when the project launched and still have no idea why. It seemed like a way to try and increase the satellite and space industry in Europe, which may seem like a good idea but with no real space program that was always going to be hard to do.

And yet again America pays for the nice things the EU uses anyway. If we're going to do it anyway, why are you going to waste money?

I've always found it crazy that any GPS enabled device doesn't have a small, one-off charge attached that goes to the US government for satellite operation and upkeep etc. Very kind of you all the same!

Don't the Japanese have one? And what about China? Nationalistic pride alone would mean an alternative.

The Japanese have an equivalent to the American Wide-Area Augmentation System using satellite signals to augment GPS signals; it only works locally, around Japan (the Indians have a similar system, only of course it works around India). China is presently in the process of constructing a system similar to GPS and GLONASS, Beidou (Compass).

GLONASS and GPS are currently the only global systems, though. More systems is nice because in theory it ought to mean faster and more precise updates--if all four systems (GPS, GLONASS, Beidou, and Galileo) were fully operational, there would be ~120 satellites up, not including augmentation satellites, so even in cities it would be fairly easy to get enough satellites for a fix relatively rapidly with a multi-band receiver.

Good, it was a silly waste of money, but then the EU is good at that. I had no idea why we needed our own positioning system when the project launched and still have no idea why. It seemed like a way to try and increase the satellite and space industry in Europe, which may seem like a good idea but with no real space program that was always going to be hard to do.

While only one constellation is needed in open areas when line of sight is restricted (eg between sky scrapers, in canyons) or when far enough north that the satellites are very low on the horizon; having more than the minimum number of sats available increases the speed and likelihood of getting a fix. This is why most current generation GNS chips can recieve both GPS ans Glonass (Russian) signals and the next generation ones are adding Beidou (Chinese) support as well.

As critical a location service is. One would not want someone else dictating terms and use. In both military and commercial terms. The cost of it once it goes up is very small. Most of the cost is already done, just get it done. It is a no brainer.

Political pride is often a bad motive for large technological efforts. One example was the SST race in the 1960s. The US canceled its government support for the Boeing 2707 SST, which forced Boeing to concentrate on the wildly successful (to this day) 747. The Anglo-French alliance pushed ahead with Concorde for political pride, and for all its no-compromise engineering, the Concorde was a commercial failure. Europe could conceivably have had Airbus earlier if those resources hadn't been spent on Concorde.

Good, it was a silly waste of money, but then the EU is good at that. I had no idea why we needed our own positioning system when the project launched and still have no idea why.

Wouldn't you rather be independent of system which could (theoretically, admittedly) be degraded, or disabled by the host nation during conflict?

Not really, conflict is unlikely and I'm fairly sure we could all manage to blow each other to pieces without GPS, although it would be interesting to know how easily America can stop other countries using GPS and still maintain full worldwide coverage themselves.

nickf wrote:

patterson_hood wrote:

It seemed like a way to try and increase the satellite and space industry in Europe, which may seem like a good idea but with no real space program that was always going to be hard to do.

The good folks at ESA might take umbrage at this.

They may, but their budget is $4 billion. NASA has a budget of $17 billion.

Good, it was a silly waste of money, but then the EU is good at that. I had no idea why we needed our own positioning system when the project launched and still have no idea why. It seemed like a way to try and increase the satellite and space industry in Europe, which may seem like a good idea but with no real space program that was always going to be hard to do.

While only one constellation is needed in open areas when line of sight is restricted (eg between sky scrapers, in canyons) or when far enough north that the satellites are very low on the horizon; having more than the minimum number of sats available increases the speed and likelihood of getting a fix. This is why most current generation GNS chips can recieve both GPS ans Glonass (Russian) signals and the next generation ones are adding Beidou (Chinese) support as well.

Good, it was a silly waste of money, but then the EU is good at that. I had no idea why we needed our own positioning system when the project launched and still have no idea why. It seemed like a way to try and increase the satellite and space industry in Europe, which may seem like a good idea but with no real space program that was always going to be hard to do.

While only one constellation is needed in open areas when line of sight is restricted (eg between sky scrapers, in canyons) or when far enough north that the satellites are very low on the horizon; having more than the minimum number of sats available increases the speed and likelihood of getting a fix. This is why most current generation GNS chips can recieve both GPS ans Glonass (Russian) signals and the next generation ones are adding Beidou (Chinese) support as well.

All well and good, but do we need a whole new constellation from europe? With GPS, GLONASS, COMPASS and apparently India getting in on the game as well it seems there are better things the money could be spent on than improving GPS accuracy.

My Garmin running watch seems to be accurate to about 1-3 metres in the open, how much more accurate do we need them to be (admittedly indoors would be helpful but wouldn't it be better using mobile phone masts to do that?)

And yet again America pays for the nice things the EU uses anyway. If we're going to do it anyway, why are you going to waste money?

You didn't do anything, you didn't plan the project, develop the tech, or launch the satellites.You were just an involuntary tax-slave in the right place at the right time.Your arrogance is bewildering.

While Galileo would serve little strategic interest—as it would largely duplicate GPS—its supporters say that it’s important for Europe to have its own such system, largely for political pride reasons

Well, whether it is a matter of political pride or a strategic decision is a question of perspective.

Some countries (France being the prime example) don’t want to rely overmuch on the United States for matters seen as vital for their national security and military defense. In that sense, building their own Satellite Positioning system makes sense, just as it made sense to develop their own nuclear capability. US citizen should under that, seeing as they generally hate to see their own country rely on anyone else for anything related to national security and/or the military.

And yet again America pays for the nice things the EU uses anyway. If we're going to do it anyway, why are you going to waste money?

You didn't do anything, you didn't plan the project, develop the tech, or launch the satellites.You were just an involuntary tax-slave in the right place at the right time.Your arrogance is bewildering.

Lets be fair, he said America. And the point stands, the GPS network is paid for by the US, yet we Europeans make use of it. His point seems to be, why unnecessarily replicate something, not why are you scroungers piggybacking on my tax dollars.

It has numerous good purposes completely glossed over here. Firstly the US military has said that gps is first and last a military network and it can and will be rendered un-useable if it suits the US interests. Now while that might be fine for devices for as in car gps the EU is increasingly putting together more and more automated systems such as self driving cars. Same for plane autopilots. These systems require a reliable and precise positioning system that the US gps does not provide. As always the EU mismanage it and budgets have flown through the roof. Even more so when corporate sponsors started backing out but that is a different thing entirely. Until the US is willing to provide GPS without threats of switching off or quality being turned down we Europeans require our own system.

It is interesting though, in case of conflict, just send a lot of sand bags into space and everything goes down. That something would probably be WWIII so let's hope it never gets to that point, and we happily continue to use each others satellite services.

Not really, conflict is unlikely and I'm fairly sure we could all manage to blow each other to pieces without GPS,

Conflict doesn't necessarily mean blowing each other up.What if the US decides they can use (the availability of) GPS to press other nations over certain political topics?

I'm pretty sure other nations would have something else to pressure the US back with.

How easy would it be for the US to ban non-US devices from the network though? Do all devices carry something like an IP address?

It was built in once so I assume it can be built in again. Although since 2000 selective availability has not been an option.

Interesting, so was it software based or hardware based beforehand that allowed this? Interesting they stopped building it in, if it is hardware based then any threats of turning it off seem fairly meaningless.

I don't trust the US to continue to provide GPS service to the world, or at least use it as political leverage (I am an American...maybe an ex-pat in a few years though), so I think Galileo is an excellent idea. I hope it does not get canceled. (and I definitely don't trust Russia/China/India provide no-strings location services)

I'm pretty sure that the probability of the US betraying Europe on anything really important approaches 0. Yanking GPS from foreign countries is entirely impractical; we use the system to guide our missiles.

Indeed, the primary reason to have your own system is to prevent that from happening; it is very likely that the reason that China is building their own system is because the US and Russia, if it ever really came down to it, would probably tell their GPS satellites that Beijing had the coordinates of NYC or Moscow and laugh maniacally.

Not really, conflict is unlikely and I'm fairly sure we could all manage to blow each other to pieces without GPS,

Conflict doesn't necessarily mean blowing each other up.What if the US decides they can use (the availability of) GPS to press other nations over certain political topics?

I'm pretty sure other nations would have something else to pressure the US back with.

How easy would it be for the US to ban non-US devices from the network though? Do all devices carry something like an IP address?

The US can't just shut it off for non-US devices. They can in theory (I believe) shut it off for public use, but that would impact everyone outside the military, and the resultant shitstorm means that kind of move would only ever be done in case of WWIII.

I suppose it would be possible to set satellites not over the US to shut off their civilian transmissions, but that'd be rather tricky and I'm not sure they have that capability. They can't do it selectively on a per device basis, anyways.

Yeah, I've got to wonder if there's any remotely plausible scenario that would involve both the US and Russia shutting off their global positioning networks at the same time. The hypotheticals will only become more fanciful if China completes its system in the next few years.

Political pride is often a bad motive for large technological efforts. One example was the SST race in the 1960s. The US canceled its government support for the Boeing 2707 SST, which forced Boeing to concentrate on the wildly successful (to this day) 747. The Anglo-French alliance pushed ahead with Concorde for political pride, and for all its no-compromise engineering, the Concorde was a commercial failure. Europe could conceivably have had Airbus earlier if those resources hadn't been spent on Concorde.

Whilst your logic is inescapably correct, just one trip on Concorde and especially as it came into land turning and banking like a fighter told you it was all worth it. Thank you UK< & French tax payers I enjoyed your contribution!

The US can't just shut it off for non-US devices. They can in theory (I believe) shut it off for public use, but that would impact everyone outside the military, and the resultant shitstorm means that kind of move would only ever be done in case of WWIII.

I suppose it would be possible to set satellites not over the US to shut off their civilian transmissions, but that'd be rather tricky and I'm not sure they have that capability. They can't do it selectively on a per device basis, anyways.

I wonder if they can shut it off for foreign countries military as well as civilian use, although based on daemon_byte's post I'm not sure they can even shut it off for non-millitary use. Anyone know?

Yeah, I've got to wonder if there's any remotely plausible scenario that would involve both the US and Russia shutting off their global positioning networks at the same time. The hypotheticals will only become more fanciful if China completes its system in the next few years.

The only reason to do it is if some third-party was attacking one or the other, and not at the behest of the other. Thus, pretty much China or some lame third world country.

They probably WOULD, too, if it actually came down to it, or somehow figure out some way of messing up their signalling (if they don't have one built in already, which I would hope they would because I thought of it in about five seconds and it could lead to wonderful shenanigans like the aforementioned retargeting of missiles) because neither country really wants World War III and if China was to attack either of them, both of them would want to prevent any possible retaliation.

Though I have to wonder how secure nuclear missiles even ARE. I mean, they seem like they should be pretty secure (given the whole end of the world thing), but if I was Russia and/or the US I would have at least tried to insert malware into the other side's missiles, not to mention any third party state's missiles (again, especially China's) in order to prevent an actual nuclear catastrophe in case of World War III.

Don't the Japanese have one? And what about China? Nationalistic pride alone would mean an alternative.

The Japanese use GPS.

China has had a very limited system (BeiDou-1) over Southeast Asia since 2000, and is working on a global replacement called BeiDou-2 (formerly Compass), which recently became operational in the Asia Pacific region with limited accuracy. They claim it will be fully operational by 2020, but even then it won’t be as accurate as GPS/GLONASS/Galileo.

Political pride is often a bad motive for large technological efforts. One example was the SST race in the 1960s. The US canceled its government support for the Boeing 2707 SST, which forced Boeing to concentrate on the wildly successful (to this day) 747. The Anglo-French alliance pushed ahead with Concorde for political pride, and for all its no-compromise engineering, the Concorde was a commercial failure. Europe could conceivably have had Airbus earlier if those resources hadn't been spent on Concorde.

That's a somewhat narrow reading of history.

An awful lot of the technology in Concorde made its way into the first Airbus. Concorde was a very advanced aircraft in respects other than its speed - it was basically the first Fly By Wire aircraft (using analogue computers, pretty amazing really... And before anyone mention it, yes Concorde did predate the NASA DFBW programme.) The manufacturers gained a hell of a lot of technology and experience from the development of Concorde.

Perhaps most importantly given current events, it taught its manufacturers (who went on to become the key members of the Airbus Industrie consortium) an awful lot about how to manage distributed design and manufacturing of aircraft. Something which, given the current Boeing 787 disaster is caused in no small part by Boeing's failure to manage subcontractors, Boeing need to do some significant catching up on.

It's quite plausible that without Concorde, there would never even have been an Airbus as we currently know it.